Diving without a compass

[paolov]

suunto compass on my computer wrist band.


.

 

[El Orans]

Suunto compass on my left arm.

 

[Damselfish]

Mine is on the back of my console so it always goes along for the ride. But I don't need it on that many of my dives, and I like to do natural navigation when possible.

 

[Kim]

Suunto compass on my left arm.

Ditto - or on the console if I happen to be using my wife's gear. (as she doesn't dive much right now due to the kids I try to keep her gear optimal as well as my own)

 

[grazie42]

For wreck and drift diving there´s no use, really...

We too have "bad" viz as standard but I still don´t see a need for it...
I dive a lot of unfamiliar sites (variety is the spice of life) and still don´t see the need.

For those dives when I need to get back to the point of entry, I just double back and spend the same time going back as going out. I usually find "points of interest" without a compass as well, just by following the directions given in the briefing. I do have a buddy who gets lost even when using a compass though so maybe it´s more "innate ability" than skill...I just know it works for me...

 

[Blacthorn]

I always carry one, don't really need it 95% of the time, if you pay attention natural nav is very easy, but heck I always have a dive knife with me too, and don't need that most of the time either... would rather have it on when I do, than wish I had it and be lost. (gotta love those run on sentences, needed a compass to make that one make sense I guess)

 

[Darnold9999]

Never found the need. Only direction I really care about in most dives is up.

Almost always know which way I am going and how to come back. Only time that I seem to get disoriented is in strong currents. Something about a current knocks my sense of direction out???

 

[leadweight]

Natural nav for me. Even at night.

 

[brutus_scuba]

I responded to the survey with "Only When I think I'll need it" , but I'll admit it did cause a problem for me a few weeks ago. I was out diving a quarry that was rather large and the dive plan was to swim a long the wall of the quarry till we got to the dive site we want, the dive site was a collection of school busses, cars, etc. etc. that spanned out a way sfrom the quarry wall. We decided that whoever got to 1200 psi first would let the other know so that we could go to 20 ft. and swim back to the entrance point which was a considerable distance away because this would beet having to surface swim back and we'd be at 20 to 15 feet for a while to work as our safety stop well when I got to 1200 psi we started back looking for the wall and never found it so after 3 mins at 15 feet and no wall we ascended to look for the direction we should swim and found we were closer to the middle of the quarry then we realized we tried going under to about 10 feet adn swimming a straight line back but that didn't go well and we ended up way off we would have been much better off with a compass we had to do a long surface swim after one.